


What You Need Most

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s11e23 Alpha and Omega, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Reunion, Schmoop, case-fic kind of?, episode coda, john winchester is an amazing dad, mary is a kick ass hunter, top!dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:16:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7035376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the After-party...</p><p>  <em>At Amara's words, Dean had expected to be home, in the bunker, wrapped in one of Sam’s desperate we-just-averted-another-apocalypse hugs with his mouth pressed hard and warm to Dean’s temple in a kiss that promised oh-so-much more later, because that was what he needed most after having to watch Sam valiantly not crumble to pieces in the face of Dean’s certain death in that cemetery. Finding his mom shivering in the cold at the edge of the park in the nightgown she’d died and burned in was the last thing he’d expected to see, couldn’t see at all how it was what he needed most.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dean was at the kitchen table, hunched over his coffee, holding himself together with a litany of _Sam’s alive. He’s not dead. He can’t be dead_. Over and over in his head, because if he was, wouldn’t Billie come to gloat? Wouldn’t she at least let him know? After her snide little comment about seeing them, but hopefully not today, when she’d left the bunker, what…only hours ago? Had it been only that long? How could all this have happened in only a few hours?

Dean’s head hurt. He pushed the coffee away and hunched further down, pressing his forehead to the table. It was solid and cool, and if he focused on just that one point of contact, he could breathe into the next moment, past the constriction in his chest that was like a rope pulling tighter and tighter with every passing second.

‘Sweetheart?’

Dean jolted, reached for his gun. It wasn’t in his waistband. Probably a good thing. Drawing on his mother wasn’t a very good show of hospitality. 

His mother. Mary. Mary was here.

He could still barely wrap his brain around that. 

_You gave me what I needed most. I want to do the same for you…_

At Amara's words, Dean had expected to be home, in the bunker, wrapped in one of Sam’s desperate we-just-averted-another-apocalypse hugs with his mouth pressed hard and warm to Dean’s temple in a kiss that promised oh-so-much more later, because that _was_ what he needed most after having to watch Sam valiantly not crumble to pieces in the face of Dean’s certain death in that cemetery. Finding his mom shivering in the cold at the edge of the park in the nightgown she’d died and burned in was the last thing he’d expected to see, couldn’t see at all how it was what he needed most.

Until they’d gotten back to the bunker.

She’d ridden beside him in silence, not having batted an eye when he hot wired a car down the street with an orange sheriff’s sticker on it saying it was abandoned, shrouded in a zip-up hoodie he’d found in the backseat, with her hands tucked between her knees. She watched him but said nothing, and he couldn’t find any words to fit the moment. They hadn’t even hugged. Not really. He didn’t know what to do with her presence, it was like a weight that set him suddenly off balance, and his mind wasn’t on how good it should feel to see her alive and breathing again, it was on how fast he could get to his brother because this was something he didn’t know how to deal with on his own.

Sam wasn’t at the bunker, though. There was just a smeared banishing sigil on the library doorway, and a bloody handprint on the war room table that exactly matched the size and breadth of Sam’s. But there was no Sam, and no Cas. The print that activated the sigil was several sizes too small to be Sam’s, and Dean knew the smell of gun powder no matter how faint or faded it was. Sam had been taken from the bunker, and he was wounded. Dean wouldn’t let himself think that he was dead. 

It had become clear, when Dean slammed his closed fist into the sigil so hard there was a slight crunch of bone and roared his fury and felt Mary’s arm slip around him from behind and hold him steady while he shook like a leaf in a gale, exactly why Amara had bestowed the gift she had. Mary was strength and comfort and reason in Dean’s mind. She would be a stabilizing force when he was nothing but a loose collection of raw, shredded emotion, because right then he felt very much like an angry, lost little boy who could only sit and shake his small useless fists and scream about how unfair the world was. 

She was one more thing, too, though. 

Mary Campbell Winchester was a Hunter. 

Dean flinched from the cool, soft hand on the back of his neck that seemed so insubstantial compared to the heavy weight of his brother’s touch, and looked sideways to see Mary clad in jeans that were only a little ill-fitting and made of the much more sturdy denim of fifty years ago that he had unearthed for her in a storeroom, and one of Dean’s own flannel shirts because Sam’s literally swallowed her. She was barefoot for now and her hair was pulled up with a plastic tie. On the whole, she looked younger than Dean expected, much more like the girl he had met back in seventy six and seventy-eight. It was comforting, really, being able to see that girl in her, knowing there was a Hunter under the skin even if she may be four decades removed from it. It wasn’t something you could forget. 

She let her hand slip away, and Dean breathed an unconscious sigh of relief. Mary sat down across from him, pulled his coffee cup toward her and took a sip, then pushed it back toward him. 

‘Your dad liked his black,’ she said quietly.

Dean nodded, licked his lips. ‘Yeah. Spoon’d stand up in it sometimes it was so dark.’ Mary smiled. ‘Guess I took after him, but Sam. Sammy, he likes the froofy stuff…’

Dean stumbled to a halt, words caught on the lump in his throat. He ducked his gaze away, unwilling to let Mary see whatever might be in his eyes when he thought of his brother.

‘Dean.’ She put her hands flat to the table, pushed them out half way, offering but not forcing any contact between them. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, like she couldn’t work the words around to get them out right, or maybe couldn’t find the right words. All she finally said was, ‘Tell me.’

Dean startled, eyes flashing wide for a second. Tell her? Tell her what? Tell her the son she’d only barely taken to her breast was most likely wounded, bleeding, possibly dying and she may never see him again? Or maybe he should start with how her two baby boys had found comfort in a much less conventional way in each other, ‘Yeah, Mom, we’re basically fucking.’ That would go over well. He needed to go further back, though, back to the beginning, tell her how Jess had burned on the ceiling because Azazel couldn’t have Sam sidetracked from his destiny as boy-king of Hell. Then there was demon blood and Lucifer, the apocalypse and dick-bag angels, Purgatory, the Gates of Hell, the Mark, the Darkness, and oh yeah, they’d just very nearly killed God.

There was a lot there, and she wasn’t prepared for any of it, and Dean was in no fit state to figure out how much she needed to know to try and get Sam back. He covered his face for a moment, breathed, knotted his fingers together and looked at her over the rough terrain of his interlocked knuckles. She moved her hands an inch closer. He took another breath and dropped his to cover hers. They were shaking and she turned up her palms, curled her fingers around his. They barely reached, and he marveled at the smallness of her, but also her strength as she squeezed down hard.

‘What do you remember?’ he asked, voice rough and halting. It couldn’t be much, and he knew that, but he had to start somewhere.

Mary’s eyes went dark for a moment, slid to the side, then came back to her son’s. ‘The demon. I remember him standing at Sammy’s crib.’

‘Did you—.’ Dean floundered, looked down at the table, hardly able to ask the next question. ‘Did you know? What he was doing?’

‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘But you do.’

It wasn’t a question. There was no doubt in her voice. Dean nodded.

‘Is it important anymore?’ she asked carefully.

Dean shook his head. ‘No. Not anymore. We’ve…kind of moved on from that.’ He gave a dry bark of laughter. ‘Bigger fish, if you can believe that.’

Her hands tightened around his, and Dean felt the scalding tears that had threatened at the back of his throat since the moment he’d seen Sam’s bloody handprint on the table start to spill over, one at a time, in slow fiery trails down his cheeks. 

‘Dad’s dead,’ he said suddenly.

Mary’s nostrils flared a little, but she nodded slowly. ‘I know.’

Dean’s gaze shot up. ‘Is he—?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said before the ember of hope could catch into a flame. ‘I only know that he’s…gone.’

Dean hung his head again. Some part of him had hoped, the same part of him that wanted to fall at Chuck’s knees and plead or pray or whatever it took to make it all better, to heal all the hurts and make all the pain go away; that part had hoped his father had made it to Heaven.

‘Where…? Where were you?’ 

Mary looked around, taking in more than just the kitchen and the bunker, looked back at Dean and smiled out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Here.’

‘Here?’ Dean's gut knotted up.

‘On this plane,’ she clarified. ‘For a very long time, I was at the house. Until you and Sam…’

‘Yeah.’

She let her words go at the look in her son’s eyes. Tortured. Broken. 

‘I drifted after that.’ Her brow wrinkled. ‘I was aware, I think, but not. If that makes any sense. There were others with me. All of us just wandering. We weren’t ghosts. I don’t know what we were.’

‘The Veil,’ Dean said. 

Mary shook her head again. ‘Maybe. I don’t think so, but maybe.’

‘Did you have a chance to go to…you know?’

Mary smiled again, at the corner of her mouth, and Dean was struck by the familiarity of it. He’d seen it in the mirror. ‘There wasn’t a light, if that’s what you mean. I think the way I died bound me to the house in some way. I couldn’t have left if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to, because the footprint he left…’ She paused, rubbed her thumbs against Dean’s knuckles, like she needed something tactile to remind herself that she was real and he was real and they were here together. ‘Azazel left so much evil in his wake. It was like a magnet, and I was so afraid your father would bring you boys back to it. I had to stay. I had to protect you.’

‘But we never came back.’

‘No.’ Her eyes shone a little. ‘I guess it was a good thing your father’s grief was too strong to stomach going back to that house.’

Dean hesitated over his next question. ‘You know…what he became. What he made us into.’

‘I do.’ 

The regret and sorrow in those two simple words filled the space between them with something so palpable Dean had to swallow several times before he could speak again. He pulled her hands closer across the table, folded them one into the other, and held them tight between his own.

‘He did his best. I don’t think he ever intended… He always talked about settling down somewhere. After. He just couldn’t let you go like that without finding the thing that killed you, and it took…so much more than he could have imagined.’ He paused, rubbed the pad of his thumb down the slender line of hers. ‘He didn’t want us to ever be in danger like that again. He did right by us, the best way he knew how, and it just… It became our lives, or at least mine. Sammy, he would have gotten out if—.’

‘Dean,’ Mary stopped him by trapping his absently rubbing thumb beneath her own. ‘You never have to defend your father’s actions to me. He may not have been a Hunter, but he was a warrior, and some part of me knew that, loved that, no matter how much I told myself I wanted only peace for myself and my children. He stepped up when he was needed. I would have expected nothing less.’

Dean stared at her, awed by the easy acceptance in this woman whose younger self had struggled so hard to shed the family bonds of monsters and demons in the dark, swearing she would never bring her children into that life. He had accustomed himself to that woman after his previous domesticated vision of her had been shattered by that fateful trip backward in time. It was hard now to see her as she must really have always been: prepared for the dark, ready to fight if the need ever arose, the Hunter in her only sleeping but never dead. 

‘What I regret most,’ she continued, ‘is that you and Sam had only each other. You were so alone.’

Dean shifted uncomfortably in his seat. They were treading on territory that could too easily stray into the truth of his and his brother’s relationship—not just their relationship, their love for each other, the way it had permeated their selves and made them into something different, something better than either of them alone could be. But he had no way to convey that to her, no way to make her understand how intrinsically entwined they had always been, and that what they were now was only a physical expression of that ‘oneness’ they had always felt together. 

These thoughts were dangerous. They ripped and pulled at Dean's heartstrings, and he could feel his eyes welling up again in fear of his loss. He bowed his head to hide the tears. What would his mother think of him that he couldn't keep it together over this? But it wasn't supposed to be this way. _He_ was supposed to be the sacrifice. It was _his_ endgame, not Sam's. He'd taken on Amara to save the world, but more importantly, to save his brother, and even after it had all turned out for the better—an outcome he never would have or could have predicted—someone had poached on his territory and taken from him the one thing that he couldn't live without. 

'Sweetheart.' Mary worked her hand loose and brushed her fingers through Dean's hair. He tried hard not to pull away. It was a comfort to be sure, but not the one he wanted. 'We'll find him. Now, tell me. Tell me where we start.'

Dean breathed out, forced the angry desperation back and focused on the determination in Mary's voice, steel banded and fierce, the kind of strength only a mother could summon.

'All right,' he said. 'All right.'


	2. Chapter 2

Sam groaned as he came awake. His head was splitting. For a few seconds, he couldn't scrabble together enough of his memory to piece together where he was or how he'd gotten there.

Cas. He and Cas had gone back to the Bunker. Cas was trying to offer consolation, in that odd, stilted way he'd always had, going through the motions that he made his very best efforts at be sincere, but that were lacking in the necessary human emotion. It didn't matter much to Sam, though. Nothing was mattering much to him. His mind was on drowning himself in the two beers Dean had left sitting in the kitchen, the bottle of single malt Chuck had left on the table in the library, the God-knew-how-many-decades old Scotch in the decanter Dean always kept mysteriously full and saved for the 'special' occasions.

This was a special occasion. It was going to be the last time Dean died. Billie had guaranteed that. Looked like she got to see him sooner rather than later after all, and Sam was seriously considering giving her a twofer. It might not be what Dean wanted, and Cas may be there at his heels on his brother's bidding to prevent exactly that, but Sam didn't care right now. He just didn't care. He was emptied out inside, hollowed and cold and he wasn't even sure he had any tears to cry. There had always been a way before. There was always a deal to be made, a spell to be cast, but this time…this time was _the_ time. The last time. Dean was dead. His brother was dead. 

The love of his life…was dead.

Sam rolled over carefully on what he determined must be a bed. It was surprisingly fairly comfortable and almost large enough for his goliath frame. He gingerly felt at the back of his head and found a small goose egg. 

_'Ello, 'ello!_

Sam's eyes snapped open. He sat up and felt a wave of nausea creep up the back of his throat. The woman. The sigil. She'd banished Cas just as they were coming down the stairs. What had she said her name was? Toni something-or-other? Men of Letters, London chapter. _What the hell?_ Sam had worked under the assumption that the Men of Letters was de-funked, killed off by Abaddon. It hadn't occurred that there might be other cells in other countries. Of course it would make sense, he supposed. After their run in with Eileen he'd meant to do some research to see if he could find out more about her parents, as a favor to her really, for helping them out, but also to see if there were other legacies, in hiding or ignorant of their heritage, born of parents who may have traveled out of the states, like Eileen's. 

Bits and pieces started slotting back together.

_We've been watching you, Sam. What you've done, the damage you've caused—archangels, Leviathans, the Darkness, and now, well—the old men have decided enough's enough. I mean, let's face it, Sam. You're just a jumped-up hunter playing with things you don't understand and doing more harm than good._

It had been a little insulting really, and Sam would have protested except for the gun in her hand. He wasn't particularly afraid. She was a slip of a thing. If he could get his hands on her, he could break her in half like a dry twig with little or no effort. Not that he would. Although, the mood he was in, he might have done anyway.

_Look, lady, you and I both know you won't pull that trigger—_

Only she had, and—

There was a soft moan from nearby. 

The memory crashed into him like a hammer between the eyes. 

He'd braced himself for the shot, for the pain that would come after, almost welcoming it, hoping for a kill shot because he had no idea how much he was worth to whoever she was working for. Maybe they wanted him alive, or maybe they thought he'd caused enough trouble that killing him was an acceptable if not welcome loss. It wasn't him she had aimed at, though. There had been a heavy grunt behind him and the sound of someone falling…

Sam swung around, too fast, and it made his head swim, but he swallowed back the nausea and forced himself to his feet, across the few feet to another bed that he could make out in the dimness of the room. It registered in the back of his mind that he wasn't bound, he wasn't in a cell, and he wasn't alone. Either the people who had him were very, very stupid and had no idea what he was capable of, especially with the assistance of the other man in the room; or they were very, very smart and knew exactly what move he was going to make to try and escape wherever it was they had him locked down, because he was sure they had him locked down, one way or another. Now matter how civilized the British may be, they would definitely have the door locked. 

But that wasn't his main concern right now. 

He dropped to his knees beside the bed, felt across the coverlet with his hands until they came in contact with an arm, a shoulder, a whole body. He swallowed a sudden upsurge of tangled emotions he couldn't begin to name.

'Dad?' he whispered.

'Sammy?'

Sam dropped back on his haunches, breathless with shock. 

John Winchester was alive.

'Dad, how did you—?' he fumbled for words. 'How are you even…alive?'

John sat up slowly, easing his feet to the floor. Sam lurched to help him, hands fluttering, not sure exactly where the bullet had found its mark.

'Dad, you were shot. Are-are you okay?'

John straightened, seemed to take stock of himself. Sam peered through the dark, tried to pick out any details outlined shape of his father, until it occurred to him to try and find a light. He leaned sideways, hand searching out the probability of a table between the beds and a lamp on the table until his fingers grazed a switch and turned it. 

The light was a shock to both of them. Sam squinted at the brightness and then turned, seeing his father clearly for the first time.

John's shoulder was bandaged beneath the open flannel shirt draped around an arm that was bound up in a sling. He reached up to test the wound with careful fingers, moved the shoulder a little, then shook his head in wonderment. 'Apparently, someone wants us alive, and at least mostly undamaged.'

Sam stared. 'I-I guess…Dad, how…?'

John looked up, eyes shining in the low light. He smiled and reached out a hand to catch Sam around the back of the neck and pull him in. 'Jesus, Sammy, it's so good to see you.'

Sam went with the pull of his father's hug, felt the weight of his strong arm drape across his shoulders and hold tight. It brought tears to his eyes. Not because he'd missed his father's affection, though he had to a degree, but because it was someone else's strong arm he wanted right now. Someone who would never hold him again. 

His breath caught on a sudden sob and he hunched forward, shoulders curling inward.

'Sam?' John queried, concern alive in his voice. Sam shook his head, unable to speak. He braced himself against the bed when John's arm slid away. 'Sam, what is it? Were you hurt?'

'N-no,' he managed. 'No, I'm fine. It's just…'

He didn't want to say the words out loud. Saying the words would make it real, make it final. They would be a pronouncement to the world that could not be retracted. He pulled an arm across himself to hold them in.

'Sam…' 

John's tone held a hint of that old warning, the old commanding marine. Sam twitched beneath it, felt a curl of the old rebellious anger rise to meet it, but it fizzled and died before it could catch fire. What did it matter anymore? What did any of it matter? His brother was dead.

'Dean's dead.'

The words were out of his mouth before he could think too hard, sharp-edged and leaden between them. He felt John's breath huff out of him like he'd been punched, felt him sway back a little, but he couldn't find the strength to reach out to steady him.

'How?' John asked, voice tight and clipped. 'When?'

 _Saving the fucking world! Again!_ Sam wanted to scream. _Saving me. Like he's always done. Because you fucking told him to. And then because he couldn't do anything else, because he loved me, and I loved him, and how am I suppose to fucking survive without him!_

'A few hours ago,' Sam rasped out. 'I think. Depending on how long we were out. He was…' He laughed, harshly, because if he didn't he would cry. Scream. Sob his brains out. 'The world was ending. Again. He went to save it. Again.'

John was silent for a long minute, finally said in a low voice, strained, to keep it steady, 'One way ticket, huh?'

'Heh…yeah.' Sam dropped back again, butt on the floor between his ankles, shoulders hunched, hands limp on his knees, perched like the five-year-old he felt like, afraid and alone and angry at the unfairness of it all. 

'That have anything to do with why we're here?' John asked.

Sam shrugged. 'Maybe. I don't know.'

'Do we know where 'here' is?' John persisted.

Sam didn't bother to look around. He just shook his head. 'No. I have no idea.'

'Son.' John gripped his shoulder, gave it a stiff shake. 'I know it hurts. I know. But we've got to focus here. We need to figure out where we are, and how to get out, because I'm guessing, patching us up or not, these aren't friends of yours.'

'No. They're not,' Sam answered reluctantly.

 _But your son is dead…he's fucking_ dead! _And all you can think about is the next goddamn step. What does it matter what the next step is? He's dead. Dean is dead! And I'm never going to get him back…_

Always the plan, always the fight, always forward. That was John, through and through. Never pause to feel the pain. Fight your way through it. Which was fine for everyone else except him, because John had drowned his instead, on many more than one occasion; so it was kind of a double standard that he tell Sam to grab his bootstraps and man up. It was the double standard Sam had always hated in the man. 

He drew himself up anyway, squared his shoulders, and pushed himself up off the floor. He patted down his pockets. He'd been divested of his gun, of course, and his boot knife. His lock picks were also gone. He went to the door, tried it. It was locked, as expected. The wood felt thick and heavy under his hands, solid, and he suspected there was more than one lock on it.

John was at the window. 'Bars,' he said, peering between the curtains. 'We're in Chicago.'

'You got that from bars on the window?'

John looked back at him, smiled wryly and pointed out into the night. 'Inn of Chicago,' he read over a the rooftop outside. 'Too high up to climb even if we could get out. No ledge.'

Sam nodded, went back to the bed, and sat down. He watched as John walked the walls, rapping at them every couple of feet. Everything sounded very solid. 

'You have any idea at all who these people are, Sam?'

Sam sighed, pinched the skin between his eyes. 'She said something about the Men of Letters, London chapter house.'

'Men of Letters? Who're they?' John asked, still canvasing the room.

'Us.'

'What?' John stopped, stared.

'It's a…long story,' Sam said. His head was throbbing, and he was starting to feel sick again. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. John came across the room, sat down beside him, and rubbed a hand between his shoulder blades. Sam shuddered under the touch. 

'I don't think we're going anywhere until they decide,' John said quietly. 'We've got time.'

Sam scrubbed at his face. Where did he even start? 'Yeah, Dad, Grandpa showed up and gave us the key to the Batcave just before he was offed by a redheaded Knight of Hell named Abaddon.' That would be shock enough since John had always believed his father had abandoned him, and then to add the rest of it? Dean going to Hell, Lucifer rising, Sam in the Cage, the Apocalypse, and on, and on. There was too much to tell, way too much to sum up, and Sam didn't want to anyway. There was too much of he and Dean and what they were to each other all wrapped up in that. The story couldn't be told without telling about them, too, and Sam had a feeling John's acceptance didn't reach nearly that far, no matter how many abnormal and supernatural things he'd encountered in his lifetime. 

'Why did you do it?' Sam found himself asking instead.

John's hand stilled on Sam's back, slipped away into his lap where it clenched in a tight first. He stood up and paced away to the opposite wall. Sam followed him with his eyes.

'He was never the same after that, you know,' he said quietly, trying not to pick at the fight he could see in his father's eyes. 'He felt…responsible. The things he did after that…' He drifted off, watched John lean against a dresser, head down. 'He was broken. Never could see himself worth the sacrifice you made.'

John cursed quietly, slammed the flat of his fist into the dresser top. 'I was afraid of that.' He shook his head, maybe at the memory of the day, maybe in denial. 'I didn't know any other way to save him, Sam. And I had to save him.' John's eyes cut sharply to Sam, fiery and determined. 'I was not going to let my son die for my vendetta.'

'And me…?' Sam asked, voice small and uncertain.

'Oh, Sammy….' John came back to the bed, hunkered down in front of his son, like he was the boy he had been thirty-some years ago. 'That was the real reason I had to save Dean. You. I could never protect you like he could, and you needed the very best we could give you. I knew that. I knew the challenges you were facing— You needed your brother. Not me.'

Sam gawked. 'What do you mean?'

John smiled fondly, ruffled Sam's hair and cupped his cheek. 'Your brother loved you, Sam. So much.'

'I know,' Sam whispered.

'No.' John shook his head. 'He loved you like I've never seen before. From the moment we put you in his arms for the very first time, he was by your side, talking to you, teaching you, playing with you, watching out for you. He was your self-proclaimed guardian angel, Sam. 

'After the…fire, you were never out of his sight, barely beyond his reach, any time of day. He took care of you, Sam, when I couldn't. He seemed to know exactly what you needed before you needed it. There was no hurt he couldn't make better, no time he couldn't get a smile from your tears.'

John huffed a sad little laugh. 'You got on his nerves for sure, like any little brother would, but it never lasted. He couldn't stay angry at you. I always told him to look after you every time before I'd leave, but I never really needed to. In Dean's eyes, in his _heart_ , you belonged to him.'

Sam clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a sob, and John squeezed his shoulder, drew him forward into another hug, kissed his hair at the crown of his head like he'd done years and years ago. 

'I know it hurts, son. I know it does. Believe me. You've been together for so long with only each other to rely on, and God help me maybe I was wrong to raise you like that, but I thought it was the best thing for you both. You needed someone to hold you back Sam and hold you up and hold you together, and I knew Dean could do it. He wanted to do it. It was like he was born for nothing else; and to have lost that…' John paused to swallow back his own tears. 'Whether you believe it or not, I understand.'

Sam nodded in silence, too far beyond trusting his voice to speak. John eased him back onto the bed, scooped his booted feet up onto the mattress and flipped the coverlet over him. 

'Get some rest, Sam. I imagine they'll come for us in the morning, but until then, rest.'

John flipped out the light, and Sam closed his eyes and tried to imagine his beloved brother haloed in the light of a thousand suns, vanquishing the Darkness to the furthest reach of the universe, like the great heroes in all the great fairy tales always did; and he tried to forget that not every fairy tale had a happy ending.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean started by snapping a picture of the sigil in the library doorway. 

He wasn't as computer savvy as Sam—he'd never needed to be—but Sam had shown him the archive he'd been slowly putting together, digitizing all the files in the bunker. He uploaded the photo and set it to do a search for the image. It was familiar in its general shape and some of the main symbols, but there was another language besides Enochian written in at the edges, and he hoped it might point him in the direction of who drew it, or at least where they came from. 

Meanwhile, Mary took a print off the blood left on the table in the war room. She'd noticed a set of partials on the edge that Dean had not seen at first and couldn't be Sam's. The shooter's maybe? _Not killer_ , he told himself firmly. Besides an initial introduction to the technology, Dean didn't have to do much to set her up on the computer. He gave her a cursory explanation of the Internet and punched up the databases she would need to search, but she managed to upload the picture of the print and initiate the searches all by herself. It was like she was familiar with it in the sense she'd read about it, or watched someone else do it, she had just never been able to get hands on before. He was a little curious about that, like he was curious how she seemed so at ease with suddenly being alive thirty-three years in the future and hardly asking any questions about the world in general or Dean and Sam's lives in particular. 

She settled in to her task across the table from him and clicked through possible matches, steadily discarding those that were impossible or unlikely, and every once in a while drawing Dean's attention to one that may be suspect. So far there were no significant hits among the hundred or so that had been flagged because of the incompleteness of the print. He wasn't surprised, and he wasn't all that hopeful. Anyone who knew about the bunker, wasn't likely to be in a law enforcement database, much less be a member of the human race, but it was something to do, something to keep them both occupied.

A few hours, several beers—nearly half of them Mary's to Dean's surprise—and a plate of sandwiches later, Sam's search engine came up with a hit.

'Look at this,' Dean pointed at the screen. Mary came to lean over his shoulder, absently putting an affectionate hand in his hair. 'Looks like the extra symbols are Celtic. Says here they were added as a kind of 'sedative' to keep the angels away longer.' He squinted at the screen. 'It was used most widely by the…European chapters?' 

He leaned back in his chair. Mary reached past his shoulder and paged down on the screen. 'Did you have an affiliations with these people?'

'No,' Dean said. 'Sam and I thought we were the last.'

'The last of what?'

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. 'The last of the Men of Letters.' Mary gave him a confused look. Dean reached back and took hold of her hand, pulled it down and held it between his own. 'It was a society that Dad's dad was a part of, a society of scholars who researched the supernatural.'

Mary's eyes widened. 'John's father? But he deserted them when John was just a boy. How do you even know about him? Your father barely knew anything.'

'We met him,' Dean said. 'He didn't desert Dad. He came through a door in time, trying to find him to get his help with a Knight of Hell, and he found us instead.' Dean paused, smiled. 'He saved our bacon.'

'Is he alive?'

'No. He died helping us trap Abaddon. She murdered almost all the society's members. The few Sam and I ever tracked down said it disbanded after that, went into hiding.' He leaned forward, frowning at the screen. 'It never occurred to us that there were other sects of the society in different countries.'

'But why would they come here? Why would they want to hurt Sam?'

Dean sighed heavily. Why _wouldn't_ they? After everything the two of them had brought down on the world, intentionally or not. But now was not the time to regale his mother with that story, to criminalize her sons. 'We aren't exactly on anybody's hit parade, and most Men of Letters members would scoff at us because we're Hunters. The two groups weren't exactly fond of one another. Gramps called us 'apes.''

Mary raised an eyebrow, and it stung Dean to his core how very much it reminded him of Sam. He looked away. 

'My son's aren't 'apes,'' she said firmly. She turned back to he screen. 'So, they came here for, what, do you think?'

'Probably to kill us for nearly ending the world again,' Dean muttered.

'What?' Mary frowned at him.

'Never mind. Long story,' Dean pushed backward. 'If they are the ones who…hurt Sam, then we need to figure out where they came from.' He moved toward one of the stacks near the back where he knew the more mundane administration ledgers and membership logs were kept for the Men of Letters. 'We ran into a girl not long ago. Her mother was the daughter of a Mnn of Letters in Ireland. We just assumed they were stationed over there from here. Maybe that wasn't the case—'

Mary's laptop pinged at them. She rounded the table. 'It's found another hit. I think—'

There was silence and the sound of Mary dropping into her chair.

'Mom?' Dean leaned out of the stacks. 'You okay?'

'Dean, you need to… You need to come look at this.' Her voice was thready, her face pale, and Dean strode around the table, bent over her shoulder to peer at the picture on the screen. 'Oh my god…' she breathed, hand going to her throat. 'John…'

'Dad? How is that even—?'

But his mother was sitting with him, doing research, after thirty-three years of being dead, or a ghost, or a spirit, or stuck in the veil. Whatever. Why would it be a stretch for John Winchester to have returned from the Beyond as well? Dean blinked, almost afraid he was hallucinating. Amara hadn't just given Mary back to him. It wasn't just his mother Dean needed most. 

It was his family.

'Sonofabitch…' he breathed, and then shot a quick glance at his mother. She was oblivious to his language, staring at the screen, transfixed by the man holding the letter board in the mugshot on screen. 

It wasn't one of John's finest moments. The photo may have been black and white, but it was easy to see his eyes were bloodshot either from exhaustion, drink, or both. His hair was too long, unruly, greasy and matted, probably with blood and monster guts. He had at least five days worth of beard and there was no way to mistake the desperation that ran just parallel to insanity in his face. Dean thought back, trying to recall when that shot might have been taken. It had to have been in the earlier days. John got too smart too fast for the cops to catch him later on.

Mary reached out to touch the screen with her fingertips. 'Is he…?' She couldn't finish, like she didn't dare hope. 

Dean dropped his head down and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'In the last twenty-four hours, God has nearly died, the world has nearly ended, I've planned my own funeral, my mom has been brought back from the dead, and my brother has been kidnapped or—' He cut off that last thought. 'Why wouldn't it be possible for Dad to be alive?'

Mary turned, her face full of impossible hope, a hope Dean desperately wanted to share, but not for his father. 'How do we find him?'

'We find Sam.'

'But where do we search? We can't cover all of Europe alone!'

Dean straightened up. 'Well, there's one thing we haven't tried yet.'

 

Cas was in pretty poor shape when he appeared in the middle of the library, swaying on his feet so that Dean had to catch him under the arms and lever him into one of the tall wingback chairs.

'This is an angel?' Mary asked, a little skeptical.

'Yeah,' Dean cradled Cas' jaw for a moment, tried to help him focus. 'He's…had the tar kicked out of him. He's usually in a bit better condition. Wing's are just a bit frayed right now. Cas? Buddy, can you hear me?'

'Dean,' Cas marveled. 'You're alive. How…? The Darkness—'

'Let's just say all she really needed was some TLC and a little understanding,' Dean answered. 'It wasn't me she wanted, or the world, or any of those souls. She just wanted her brother. In the end, she got him.'

'I don't understand,' Cas frowned.

'Don't worry about it right now,' Dean assured him. 'The world's still spinnin' and it looks to stay that way for a while at least. Now,' he hunkered down at Cas' side. 'Can you tell me if you saw the person who was here in the bunker before you were yanked out?'

'There was a-a woman.' He pressed his fingers into his eye sockets, warding away a headache, or trying to recall a face, Dean wasn't sure. 'She sounded…odd.'

'Odd?' Dean glanced up at Mary. She shrugged. 'Like she had an accent or something?'

'Yes. She sounded…abnormally cheery considering she was guilty of breaking and entering.' Cas straightened in the chair. 'She cast me out as soon as we saw her. She had to have known what I was, that I would be here with Sam.'

'Yeah, I guessed that,' Dean said. 'So, you didn't hear a name or anything?'

'No.' Cas leaned forward, seeing the pained look that crossed Dean's face. 'Is Sam all right? I'm sorry, Dean. I know I promised—'

'Cas, man, relax.' Dean pushed him back in the chair gently. 'It's okay. Not like you could help it. We think Sam was…taken. He wasn't here when we got back, and there was…blood.'

'Dean, I'm so sorry,' the angel apologized again, then looked around, confused. 'You said, we?'

Mary stepped further into Cas' field of view. He looked her up and down, stunned, but a happy smile spread across his face despite the circumstances. 'Mary Winchester.'

She arched an eyebrow at Dean. He shrugged. 'Angel, remember?'

'Do you remember anything else?' she asked.

Cas scowled in thought. 'She sounded like…the blond woman who traveled with the crazy man in the blue box on your Netflix.'

Dean pulled a face. 'Cas, what're you _talking_ about?'

'He travels through time and space in a…blue police telephone box,' Cas said.

Dean wracked his brain, then groaned. 'Oh. That dorky BBC show Sam loves so much—'

'England!' He and Mary said it together. 

Dean looked down at Cas. 'So she was British?'

'Yes.'

'Well that's better than the whole of Europe,' Mary said. 

'Yeah, and what's more,' Dean said, moving back to the laptops, 'she's not going to try and haul two prisoners back on a commercial flight. So, there must be a private plane and possibly even a private airfield.' 

He started typing furiously, employing every trick he'd ever learned from Frank and Sam. 'I hope this doesn't mean plane tickets,' he muttered. 'I _hate_ flying.'

 

An hour later, Dean came up dry of any flights within five hundred miles leaving for the the UK. 

'Maybe she hasn't left,' Mary suggested.

Dean shoved his hands through his hair. 'Then she could be anywhere.' 

He swore viciously and shoved back out of his chair, started to pace the room. He was tired. Exhausted, really. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he slept. The last seventy-two hours were a blurry whirlwind, and he didn't think sleep was anywhere in there to be found. He'd be smart to get a couple hours shut-eye. John had taught him how to stay awake when it was necessary, how to stay sharp, but he had also taught him how to recognize the threshold at which point he was more of a detriment, to himself and those he was trying to help, than useful. He'd just about reached that point.

He stopped at the furthest point from Mary, who sat at the other computer, paging through flight data that Dean had hacked into, and Cas, who was still curled limply in the chair recovering from whatever that woman's sigil had done to him. Dean rested his head against the cool stone of the wall for just a moment, closed his eyes, tried to focus on the blackness behind them and keep the sharp flashes of bloody handprints at bay. 

He didn't know how long he stood like that, but he startled when he felt Mary's hands on his shoulders, her thumbs working up the back of his neck toward his hairline. He moaned involuntarily, before he came all the way back to himself, hungering for that same touch from a bigger, stronger pair of hands.

'Sweetheart, you should rest,' she said softly. 'You won't do anyone any good if you exhaust yourself.'

'I'm okay, Mom,' he said, gently sliding out from beneath her touch, but even he wasn't convinced by the slightly slurred words. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. 'I can't sleep anyway. Not with Sammy out there. I have to find him.'

She nodded and didn't press him further.

Cas stirred in his chair. 'Dean, what if you search for her entry point instead?'

'Huh?'

'You've been looking for flights leaving the country. What if you look for flights coming in? At least it will give you a starting point. Perhaps she will have returned there.'

Dean nodded, renewed by this new idea. 'Cas, you're a genius.'

He sat down and started pulling up arrival data over the last few days in the same search area, passing them off to Mary as he cracked through each sites firewall. 

'Here,' she said after another thirty minutes. 'Here. There was a private jet from Heathrow that landed at LaGuardia and continued on to Chicago.'

'Chicago?' Dean closed his laptop and pressed his fingers together, thinking. 'Why didn't she just come to Kansas City, or Wichita? We've even got local air fields big enough to take a private jet.'

'Maybe there's something in Chicago she needed first, before she came here,' Cas offered.

Mary was typing away on her keyboard. 'There's a…yes. Here it is. There's a British Consulate in Chicago, just off the lake. Maybe she has contacts there she had to meet before she came for Sam, or she checked in with her back up.'

'I doubt the Men of Letters is a recognized branch of the British government,' Dean said, skeptically. 'Still. It's a place to start.' He stood up. 'Chicago it is. Let's pack up.'


	4. Chapter 4

When Sam woke again, there was a bare hint of grey, watery morning light at the window, and the throbbing buzz in his head was blessedly gone. John was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, facing the door, and Sam could easily picture the missing shotgun across his knees. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes.

'You been awake all night?' he asked, voice sleep rough and still tired sounding. 

John nodded, smiled a little. 'Yeah.'

Sam swung his feet to the floor. 'Wish there was a bathroom,' he grumbled.

John hooked a thumb to his right, and Sam spied a washbasin in the far corner. 'Probably not what it was meant for, but what the hell. Not like they provided facilities.'

Sam huffed a laugh and went to relieve himself. The basin had a running tap, so Sam rinsed it thoroughly and then splashed fresh, cold water on his face. He patted dry with the sleeve of his shirt, then turned to John. 

'Any idea what time it is?'

'Five, maybe. Little after,' John replied, looking up toward the window. 'I expect they'll come for us in a couple of hours. I've heard a little activity in the hall the last twenty minutes or so.'

'You wanna get some sleep before then?' Sam asked. 'I'll sit up.'

'I'm fine. Thanks, son.'

Sam nodded and returned to sit on the bed, hands hung limp between his knees. He had to admit their jailers were significantly more civilized that any he'd encounters in the past, but that didn't really raise his hopes for their survival any, and it didn't make the silence any easier to deal with. A silence that too quickly filled with memories he couldn't bear to look at right now. He felt his eyes prickle with the heat of tears again. Dammit. He swiped at them fiercely, dug in his pocket for a handkerchief and his knuckles caught against the sharp edge of the Impala's keys, surprisingly still in his pocket. He wrapped his fingers around them for a moment. The memory of Dean handing them to him under the falling cherry blossoms invaded his mind's eye. He'd been unable to meet Sam's eyes because they were both so close to the edge of breakdown and they had an audience, not all of whom would understand if Dean suddenly grabbed Sam's face and yanked him down to kiss him, hard and sure, one final time in farewell.

But they'd already done that.

Backed up against the door to the kitchen to ensure no one would come through, Dean had driven into his brother fast and hard and fierce, coming so hot and sharp that Sam had yelled with it, and Dean had swallowed the sound, devouring his baby brother's mouth and his breath with a pent up passion he rarely set free. Sam had clung to him and sobbed, wracking and silent, while Dean pressed feathery kisses again and again to his forehead and cheeks and neck, brushing away his tears as fast as they fell, shushing him with inarticulate nonsense sounds that Sam recalled from bygone years.

An involuntary whine stuck in his throat as he pulled his hand back out of his pocket.

'Sam?' John asked, concern cautious in his voice.

'I'm okay,' he answered quickly. 'I'm okay.'

John said nothing more.

 

By Sam's reckoning, it was about forty-five minutes later that their captors came to get them. The woman who'd shot John and pistol whipped Sam was not there, just two men in nondescript gray suits, obviously packing, but not obviously thugs. Sam considered fighting, making a break for escape, but ultimately, what for? He had nothing to go home to. So, he stepped between them and let them march him down a long hall to an elevator that went up three more floors to a level that wasn't marked on the bank of numbers. No one spoke, but Sam could feel his father's roving eyes drawing maps and marking exits, taking in people and their positions. Sam would be doing it, too, or Dean would if he were here. It was something Dean was always better at, that kind of situational mapping. 

The elevator opened into a broad, semi-circular room with no windows. The woman was there, seated straight-backed on a chase lounge. Along the curve of the room, three elderly men were seated, all wearing expensively cut suits, looking bookish and academic; something, Sam realized with a sudden wry twist to his mouth, akin to what Sam would have looked like if Dean had not taken him from Stanford that fateful night. 

'Sam Winchester,' the man in the center seat intoned gravely. He had a neatly trimmed beard and serious bearing, and could have been anywhere between the ages of fifty-five and eighty for all Sam could tell. The gentlemen seated to his right and left were equally grave in their appearance and countenance of him. He almost felt like he should bow or something. 

'Who the hell are you?' John said, before Sam could open his mouth. 'And what do you want with my son?'

A vaguely surprised look passed across the group, and Sam felt the woman rise to his right and come forward. She stopped equidistant from the triumvirate and Sam and John. She addressed Sam first.

'May I present Sir William Henry, chairman of the Men of Letters London chapter. Sir Thomas Whitsome, and Sir Harry Bellville. Gentleman, Sam and _John_ Winchester.'

'So, it is the son _and_ the father,' Sir Bellville said. 'Fortuitous.'

Sam felt John tense beside him, heard the snarl in his voice, 'You haven't answered my question.'

'We are not here to answer questions, John Winchester,' Sir Henry said. 'We are here to resolve the conundrum of your sons, who have constantly and continuously brought peril of catastrophic proportions to the world at large.' He slid a look to the woman Sam now remembered had called herself Toni. 'And where is the other son?'

'Dead,' Sam said flatly before she could open her mouth. 'Dean's dead.'

'Well, that will hardly be permanent the way these boys go,' Sir Whitsome said, and he almost sounded amused. 'I expect young Sam here has already taken steps toward resurrecting his brother by some disastrous means, as he has so many times in the past, haven't you, Sam?'

Sam swallowed thickly. 'No. Not this time.'

'Sam, what's he talking about?' 

'John, I apologize that these proceedings will seem so confusing to you, but your presence was, naturally, unexpected. I would be interested to know how, in fact, how you've come to us today, but that will have to wait a while.' He gestured to someone behind Sam and John. 'Do bring our guests some refreshment, and someone fetch chairs. No sense in them standing through all this.'

'Sir,' Sam started, confused. 'I don't understand. You sent a-a hired gun to retrieve me, shot my father, locked us up, and yet you call us 'guests?''

'We saw to your father's wounds,' Sir Henry said. 'That circumstance was regrettable, and I do apologize. You _are_ our guest, Sam, and you will be allowed to leave here, alive and in good health, so long as we reach an…understanding.'

Sam felt a chair bump against the backs of his knees and when Sir Henry motioned them to sit, he did. 'What understanding would that be exactly?'

'The understanding that your shenanigans playing God will cease,' Henry said. 'You will _not_ attempt to raise your brother from the dead. You will turn over the key to the American bunker, and you will remove yourself from the profession of 'hunter' and settle as an upstanding member of society, where you will be closely watched for your compliance for the remainder of your days.'

Sam took in the words. It wouldn't be a bad offer to accept. He didn't have the heart to hunt without his brother. He'd avowed as much more than once. Faced with it, though, his father sitting by his side, all he could think about were the people he and Dean and their father had saved, and all the people who would not be saved if Sam were to give in to what these people wanted. 

'And if I refuse?' he finally asked, slowly.

Henry looked at him for a very long moment, assessing the very real possibility of Sam's refusal. He finally said, in a very solemn voice, 'Then you will _not_ leave here, Sam Winchester.'

It was just about then that the door behind them exploded off its hinges.

_____

 

It took surprisingly little effort for Dean to pull a thick Chicago accent and walk in and bully the security camera footage out of the British Consulate Security Director.

'We've got a perp loose, armed and dangerous,' Dean claimed, flashing his fake badge in the guy's face and leaning on the counter like he owned it. 

The man straightened his tie, leaned a little away from Dean, maybe because he hadn't had a shower in three days, and maybe just because danger was oozing from his pores and the poor guy didn't want to push his luck against someone with so much _not_ to lose in their eyes. 'We haven't heard from local law enforcement on this.'

'Yeah well, you wouldn't,' Dean snapped. He was was playing up the impatient card, but not by much. 'Look, I been undercover with this guy for four months, obviously.' He gestured down at his state of grim and disarray. 'Local law ain't got no idea where he is without me. Youse guys want to obstruct justice and make this a national incident or somethin', go right ahead. 'S no skin off my nose.'

The security guy had disappeared for about five minutes, and Dean crossed his fingers that he didn't have an contacts at the local PD or his story would never hold. Dean suspected he looked very much the personification of the 'walking, ticking, time bomb' Rowena had made him into less than twenty-four hours ago, though, and they probably wanted him out the door more than anything else.

Turned out he was right.

Dean marched out with a flash drive full of security footage ten minutes after he'd walked in, rounded the corner and tossed the stick in the back window to Cas, slid into the drivers seat and moved the car two blocks down and around the corner, then turned back over the seat.

'Cas, what'd'a you got?'

Cas was the scowling at the screen, watching images fly by at angel reading speed, which was why Dean had given it to him in the first place. Dean's fingers clenched on the leather of the seat back. His stomach was a hollow, empty pit of anticipation pushing up into his throat and making it difficult to breathe. He felt Mary stir beside him, slip her hand across the seat and briefly squeeze his fingers. He didn't acknowledge her, couldn't spare the second it would take, while he watched Cas' face for any sign that his brother was in that building.

'There,' Cas piped up after another grueling ten minutes. 'Two bodies were carried in through the parking garage late last night.' He spun the laptop so Dean could see.

'Two?'

'Bodies?' 

Dean and Mary glanced at one another in mutual fear. Dean shook it off. If his brother was dead, why bother bringing the body back here. Mary apparently came to same conclusion, nodded her head as though she'd made a decision. 

'We go in.'

'Yeah,' Dean said. 'But where. And how. I can't just march us through the front door. It would take forever to search the place floor by floor, and Sam and Dad could be anywhere in there.'

'What are the chances this building was meant to house the Men of Letters if you knew nothing about any groups outside the country?' Mary asked. 'They probably don't come here often. So, where would you put an impromptu interrogation room in a building like that?'

'Basement,' Dean and Cas said together. 

Dean rolled his eyes. 'Dude, I think we _both_ need to step back from the Netflix.'

Mary's brow flickered a moment in confusion, then she shook her head. 'These people are British which means manners and protocol. They're also academicians if what you say is true, not use to using force.'

'Doesn't mean they don't have muscle,' Dean countered.

Mary ceded with a nod. 'But I doubt they're thugs.' She leaned over to look out the window at all the tall spires of metal and glass up and downtown streets. 'I say, head for the roof.'

'Cas, you got enough juice to—?'

Cas was gone before Dean could even finish. Dean sighed and sat back in the seat, fiddling with his keys. After a minute, he slid a look across to Mary, smiling a little.

'What?' she asked. 

He looked at her for a moment more, shook his head in wonder. 'You're just…not what I expected.'

She smiled wryly, that same twist of her mouth that came so easily to Dean's own lips and the arch of a thin brow that mimicked his brother's. 'It wasn't a side of me I ever wanted you to see.'

'I know, but even having met you way back when—'

'What?'

'Heh. Another long story, but let's just say I got a glimpse of the Hunter in you, and I still can't believe how _good_ you are. The way you're just sliding right in like you never left it, when it was the thing you wanted most to escape.'

Mary was silent for a minute, then, 'I was raised in it, Dean. Like you, apparently. After so long, it gets into your blood. You know that. You can't ever forget it and you can't ever get away from it, not really.'

'Yeah, I hear that,' Dean murmured, Lisa and Ben flashing briefly through his memory. 'And if you try, you only end up hurting the ones you love most.'

Mary nodded. 'Dean, that night I—'

'They are on the top floor.'

Cas reappeared in the backseat as suddenly as he'd disappeared and whatever Mary was going to say was lost in the moment. Dean muttered a curse and swiveled in the seat.

'I checked the basement, just to be sure,' Cas said. 'But it's clean. There is a top floor, accessible only by one elevator in the building, and it is warded against angels.'

'Anything I can get you past?' Dean asked, because he wanted to take whatever firepower he could muster in with him, and he wasn't sure what Mary would be like in a fight if it came to it. Nor did he have any idea in what condition they would find Sam or John.

'I don't know.' Cas shrugged. 'I can't get past the elevator, but it feels…temporary. Perhaps if you could damage them.'

'Then you could walk in the front door with us,' Dean finished. 'Okay…okay.'

He got out of the car, popped the trunk and grabbed his pump action, Sam's spareTaurus, and another pistol. He offered it out to Mary tentatively. She took it, checked the safety and the slide, and then tucked it down the back of her jeans. Dean couldn't help his grin. He turned to Cas.

'Let's do this.'

Cas got them as far as the elevator as promised. Dean dropped the one guard in the hallway with a pistol butt to his temple, then went in search of the wards that were keeping Cas away. He was right, they were temporary, drawn quite obviously on the floor and wall and the door at the end of the hallway. He ran his knife across each of them in a large 'X', breaking the binding spells. There might be, and probably were, more beyond the door, but Dean would worry about that when they got that far. 

He motioned Mary and Cas out of the elevator, and they approached the door slowly, in near silence, with Dean keeping half an eye on the elevator behind them. The door was keycarded with no other lock or handle to jimmy or break. 

'Cas?' Dean whispered. The angel nodded, and Dean drew Mary a step back and behind him.

Cas' eyes glowed electric blue in that way that still made electricity zing up and down Dean's spine and also made him a bit sick at the memory of the time he'd had to use that power against Dean. Then he raised a hand and blew the door off its hinges in a spectacular show of splinters that made Dean proud.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam and John were moving before the first specks of wood settled on the carpeting. Sam went for Toni, effectively trapping her petite frame against the long line of his body with little or no effort. He tossed the gun she had no time to draw to John who leveled it at the pair of guards standing inside the door. 

'Well, boyos, I think your angel wards need a little repair,' came a slow drawl from the doorway, and Sam's knees shook at the sound. 

'Dean…?' he breathed.

The cloud of pulped wood and splinters rained out of the air so that Sam could see the bulk of his brother standing in the doorway. Their eyes met and locked and Sam felt his heart constrict in his chest, make him momentarily breathless. 

'Hey, brother,' Dean said, voice cracking only a little, not enough that anyone but Sam would hear it. His eyes traveled over Sam hungrily, searching for wounds, for damage of any kind, then he winked and tossed Sam's gun across the room. Sam snatched it out of the air easily and let Toni go, pushing her toward the centre of the room where Dean was herding the two guards he'd disarmed. 

'Mary…?'

Sam looked up at the rusted out, shocked quality in his father's voice and found his mother standing in the door, Cas flanking her protectively, holding a pistol of her own trained on the collected group before them. John's face was naked, eyes raw, and it was reflected in Mary's own, but she did no more than nod at him, and Sam was stunned to see his mother at last as the Hunter she was born to be. John swallowed audibly, gun hand shaking only a little as he eased toward her, still keeping the guards in his sights. 

Sam couldn't image how it must feel to have her so close after all John had done in her name and not be able to just take her in his arms and hold her like he might never let go again. Or maybe he could, because Sam's chest ached, like he might be having a heart attack, with the pressure of wanting to run to his brother, wrap him up ridiculously tight, and kiss him until neither of them could breathe, but it wasn't an option right now. He kept his gunhand steady as Dean sauntered into the room. 

Sir Henry stood up slowly, surveying the scene before him. He didn't seem particularly surprised, appalled maybe, face screwed up in distaste, but not surprised. 

'And this,' he said quietly, 'is exactly our point.'

'What point would that be?' Dean asked, voice dangerously low, shotgun aimed at the man's belly.

Henry ignored the threat, incredibly calm for someone who could be aerated by buckshot if Dean took a fancy to the idea; and his eyes said that he might, glinting dangerously in the soft light. 

'Lady, don't,' Dean said suddenly, and Sam realized with a shock that he'd been ignoring Toni in favor of staring at Dean. Toni, meanwhile had slipped a pocket knife from somewhere and was attempting to open up her palm, probably to paint another sigil on the sly, though Cas still wasn't coming in the room. Sam stepped forward and divested her of it.

Dean refocused on Henry and his companions. 'Now. You want to tell me what beef  you have with my brother? Or maybe I don't even care. I'd be happy to take him and go and forget about this, except that I think you fellas would be just dumb enough to try it again, and after all we've been through the last couple of days, I don't have the energy to keep an eye out for you idiots. So. Enlighten me. What. The Hell. Do you want. With my brother?'

'Your brother is an abomination,' Henry said.

'Old news,' Dean countered. 'Try again.'

'He has time and again brought about the near destruction of the world—'

'And saved it every fucking time, too,' Dean cut in with a dangerous grin.

Henry leveled a sharp gaze on him and finished, 'In the name of saving _you._ '

Dean jolted a little, though the words weren't a shock. Both of them knew the insane lengths they would go to, _had_ gone to, to save one another from death or worse. But to have a stranger pick it out in such exacting terms was unnerving. Sam felt a drop of sweat roll down between his shoulder blades. They'd only ever been beholden to each other over the things they'd done—and a horseman maybe, and God. But the world at large had never known what the Winchesters did to save it, or the fact that some of those times it was their fault it needed saving in the first place. Most of them, probably. 

'Your point being?' Dean threw back.

Sir Whitsome stood this time. 'You are, both of you, barbarian Hunters—'

'Those are my sons you're talking about!' John raged. 

Whitsome startled a little and Mary lifted a hand to John's arm to calm him.

'The truth of the matter is,' Henry continued. 'You are both ignorant, doing more harm than good, releasing the wrath of Hell and Heaven alike on the Earth at your own discretion with no thought to the consequences other than _neither of you can live without the other._ '

Dean tucked his shotgun closer into his shoulder. Sam could see his finger twitch on the trigger. 'And you kidnapped Sam and dragged him here to, what? Stand trial for his sins? Well, they're my fucking sins, too! You take us both, or none at all!'

Sam didn't think he realized it, but Dean was gravitating further into the room, orbiting toward Sam unconsciously. 'Dean,' he said softly, stopping his brother in his tracks. 'Dean.'

Dean blinked, refocused on Henry, who now had a sad smile perched at the corners of his mouth. 'And again and again, you prove my point.'

'You haven't _made_ a fucking point yet!' Dean shouted.

'I have,' Henry said calmly. 'You are reenforcing it, by being here, with your violence, without thinking anything all the way through, other than one fact.'

Dean growled, 'And that would be?'

'You want Sam back.'

'Jesus-fucking-Christ!' Dean swore. 'We get it! I can't live without my brother. That's obvious—'

'Yes, it is,' Henry interrupted. 'Shall I recount how obvious?' He didn't wait for an acknowledgment. 'Sam Winchester should have died April 30, 2007—' Dean flinched hard even now at the memory of that awful night, and behind him be could hear Mary gasp '—but _you_ , Dean, could not leave fate to itself, so you changed, with a single decision, the course of human history and brought him back to life.'

'So? My choice,' Dean said, but his voice wasn't as steady as he would have liked. 'Free will. God said it came with the kit, and I quote. And if you're so pissed about all this, why did you take Sam? Why not come after me? I'm the one who brought him back. _I_ started it all.'

'It is true, the initial choice was yours, Dean,' Sir Bellville said from his still seated position. 'But every subsequent action thereafter, was a choice made by your brother. Decisions that time and again have brought the world to the brink of destruction.'

'Now, hold on—' John started to interrupt. 

'Raising Lucifer, inciting the apocalypse, opening the doors to Purgatory—'

'That wasn't his fault!' Dean shouted.

'A failed attempt to close the Gates of Hell,' Henry plowed on. 'Raising the Darkness, and let's not forget the civil war in Heaven—'

'We were being manipulated!'

Dean screamed it at the top of his voice and unloaded a shell into the wall just behind Henry to get his attention. All three men froze in front of him, fear finally having the good sense to creep into their eyes.

'You sonsofbitches…' Dean let the barrel of his gun fall and Sam could see tears in his eyes. 'You sit here in your neat-as-a-pin ivory towers, watching over everything, _watching_ while the world unravels and destroys itself, and you. Do. Nothing! While we, my brother and me, are down here in the gutter bleeding and dying, again and again, to keep your lame asses alive.' A tear rolled down his cheek. 'Where were _you_ when those dick-bag angels were planning an apocalypse _just because they were pissed at DAD!_ _Generations_ were manipulated for Sam and I to be born, so we could host their little party. They _wanted_ it. What were we supposed to do with Hell on one side and Heaven on the other, but fight and bleed and die?'

Dean swiped at his eyes, furious with his own tears. 'And if I couldn't live without my bother, and he couldn't live without me, because we are _all_ each other has ever had, can you really blame us? We've made messes, yeah. I'm not denying it, but we've always done whatever it took to clean 'em up.' He looked over at Sam. 'I was supposed to be dead today, and it would have been the last time, because I got my own personal Reaper just itching to chuck my ass over the edge into the big Empty, but by the grace of God—and I mean that literally—I'm still standing here to be accused by you naive, pacifist assholes.'

He zeroed back in on Henry, pinning him with a look even Sam wouldn't stand in the way of, one left over from the months Dean had carried the Mark on his arm. 'So, maybe I started it, and if I did then I would do it all over again, every damn minute of it. Because I will _not_ live without my brother. If you want someone to blame, to accuse, to take the punishment for whatever it is you believe we've caused, then…' He spread his arms open wide, tossing his gun to the floor. 'Take your best shot, 'cause you're not takin' Sammy.'

Sam lowered his gun on a surprised Toni and went to his brother. He didn't care who was in the room, or who was watching, or what they thought. He grabbed him up in a hug, one of those fierce, bone cracking things Dean had so looked forward to from the moment God and Amara had dissolved into the ether, and nearly lifted him off his feet. Dean could feel his hot breath huffing in choked off sobs against his collar. Dean returned the embrace in kind, hand going to the back of Sam's neck, knotting tightly for a few limitless seconds in his hair, turned his head a fraction and kissed his temple. None of it would have appeared untoward to any of their observers, but they knew what else there was between them and how painfully it was expanding, clogging up their airways, pounding at their ribs, wanting to be set free. 

'Gentlemen.'

Mary's voice was satin covered steel in the silence. Dean and Sam both twisted to watch her as she lowered her own gun and advance to the front to stand before the three men who eyed her, now, curiously.

'For all your intelligence and information gathering you don't seem to have the whole story, and I'd like to tell it to you.' She smiled, but it was thin and hard, and again Dean felt a surge of familiarity at it. 'If you are looking for a place to lay blame, then you should look no further than me.'

'No. Mom—' Dean started, but she raised a hand and silenced him.

'I set this family on its present course years ago, before I married John, before either of my sons were conceived. I sold my soul, literally, for love.' She spared a glance behind her to John's pale face. He was still holding his gun, but it was shaking so badly no shot would have found its mark. Her eyes were soft and apologetic, but not asking for an ounce of forgiveness. She turned back to the triumvirate. 'Perhaps it's a character flaw I passed down to my sons. Perhaps Heaven and Hell did arrange it all. The demon I dealt with certainly had his own agenda, but none of that would have mattered had I known it then. I still would have made the same choice.

'I knew the demon was coming. I didn't know for what. I didn't know about the subsequent years of pain and suffering that were ahead for my husband or my boys. But I can stand here now, before you, and tell you I would not have done _anything_ different.' Henry looked shocked and perturbed. Mary's smiled widened. It wasn't a pleasant thing to watch. 'You, none of you, have any idea what it is to sacrifice. You have no idea what it's like to have all of your choices be bad, but still have to choose one, hopefully the one where the least number of people die. My husband does. My sons do. _I_ do. And if some of those choices were made out of their love for each other, even _all_ of them, then what better reason to make a choice.'

Mary turned a slow circle, took in the whole room, until she was facing Henry again. 

'I think you gentleman should go back to your books, to your fact collecting, and not pass any more judgements on what you don't have enough information to understand. Because you can collect every fact in the world, but you will still never understand what drives this family, the sacrifices it has made, and why.' She nodded then, slowly, like it was a forgone conclusion they would follow her advice. 'Go back where you came from, keep doing what you do from the confines of your safe, warded little rooms, and let us do what we do best…save the world.'

For a handful a tense heartbeats, everyone in the room was speechless.

'Nothing has been accomplished here, then,' Bellville said into the silence.

'Oh, I think it has,' Dean piped up, coming forward to stand at Mary's side, dragging Sam along with him. 'I think you should follow the lady's advice. After all, she did marry into your highfalutin' little fan club.' Henry scowled at them, mouth opening to speak, but Dean carried on. 'Yeah, that guy back there? He's the last surviving member of the original Men of Letters here. He's the son of Henry Winchester, last member inducted into your society before they were destroyed by Abaddon. But you won't find a record of it, because he died just a few days later, having come in search of his son's help and finding a couple of _Hunters_ instead who helped him trap and dismember a Knight of Hell. Put that one in your books, guys.'

'My brother and I are not perfect,' Sam finally spoke, ignoring Dean's tug at his sleeve. ' _I_ am not perfect. I've made mistakes and some…very bad choices, but my brother, my _family_ , has always been there to save me, to lead me back to the right path. I couldn't do this without my brother.' He felt Dean's fingers close around his wrist in reassurance. He continued, 'We are your legacies. We and the others with whom we've shared your collected knowledge. We've done the very best we could to carry on in your traditions, but the thing we can't do is stand by and watch while people die and the world is slowly eaten by evil. We're Hunters. We save people and hunt things. It's what we've always done. And maybe things go awry in the process, but any time you make a choice to _act_ there will always be consequences. All you can ever hope for is that they are ones you can live with.'

The three men pulled back and conferred. John came to stand by Mary's side, and Dean pulled Sam closer up against him. Toni and the guards had backed off, apparently directionless without the instructions of their masters. They all waited.

'It appears _we,_ then, are faced with a choice of our own,' Henry said, as the three turned back to face the Winchesters. 'Obviously, you can fight your way out of here whilst only incurring a few injuries of your own and possibly leaving some or all of us dead.'

'We only kill monsters,' Dean said coldly.

'Well, our other choice is to let you go and hope for the best,' he said. 'But I would _ask_ you…to please think before you act next time the fate of the world hangs in the balance, at least long enough to call us for help, if we have any we can offer. In fact, it would be preferable if you you did not try to bring about the end of the world at all.'

'Trust us,' Dean said. 'We're planning on a long vacation.'

Sam rolled his eyes a little and smiled. 'We can do that.'

Henry nodded. 'Then the choice is made. You'll forgive me if I say I am not overly eager to ever see you again.'

Dean grinned darkly, bending to retrieve his shotgun. 'Same goes. And trust me, I'll be watching out.'

_____

 

The ride home wasn't as awkward as Dean feared it might be. 

Cas took his leave on the rainy street below, saying he would come by the bunker when things had had a chance to settle, looking pointedly at John and Mary. Dean dithered a little with his keys on his little finger waiting to see if John wanted the wheel, but John made the decision for him, opening the back door and helping Mary into the seat before he followed after her. Sam smiled across the roof of the car, stunned and exhausted and confused, but gratefully slid into the shotgun seat.

John and Mary huddled, silent, in the back of the car, and it surprised Dean a little that there wasn't some kind of animated conversation going on, playing catch up on all that had happened over the years Mary had been gone, but then he thought about all the times he and Sam had been separated, and it didn't seem so surprising at all.

Dean let is hand find its way to the center of the bench seat, and Sam's was immediately there to meet it. Their fingers twined and locked together, and Dean was grateful for the contact. It wasn't all that he wanted, but the rest would have to wait. It was all that mattered, though. There would be questions from both of them later. Sam would want to know how Dean had managed not to have to use the soul-bomb, and Dean would want to know more about how Dad had appeared and how that slip of a girl had gotten the drop on them both, but it was all secondary to that overpowering need for assurance that the other was alive and well and here in the moment. 

Dean cast a glance into the rearview and saw Mary curled up against John's chest. John's hand was in her hair, his other arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Their eyes were closed, though Dean was sure neither of them was actually asleep. They were together, and that was all that mattered to them right now.

Dean smiled and kept driving west as the sun rose up high overhead in a clear blue sky.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Sam lay curled into his brother's side, absently tracing runes of wellness and protection against Dean's ribs. He hadn't noticed in the recent months how thin Dean had started to get again while the whole God/Amara thing weighed on his mind. Sam could easily find each and every one of his ribs and slot his long fingers into the spaces between. 

'You need to eat more,' he said quietly. Laughter rumbled deep in Dean's chest, vibrating through Sam's cheek where it rested against him, and it felt wonderful.

'This comin' from the man who's always telling me I need to lay off the burgers and beer before I have a coronary.'

'Yeah, well,' Sam didn't finish the thought, but splayed his hand wide over Dean's sunken belly under his ribs. 'You're too thin now. All that worrying you've been doing lately.'

'I'll catch up,' Dean smiled and sifted a hand through Sam's hair. 'I'm not the only one who could afford to put on a few pounds, either.'

Sam chuckled briefly, but then fell into a pensive silence.

'What is it, Sammy?' Dean asked, hand stilling in his hair.

Sam didn't speak immediately, only continued to doodle against Dean's skin. When he finally did, it was stilted and a little rough. 'It wasn't such a bad offer they gave me, you know?'

Dean tensed. 'What offer was that?'

'To quit,' Sam said. 'To quit hunting and settle down somewhere out of the way. It came with provisions, of course, but the idea as a whole…'

'Would you have taken it?' 

'I don't— I don't know.' 

Sam pressed his face closer into Dean's side, and Dean could feel it heating up. Sam's precursor to tears. He supposed it had to happen sometime. The pressure valve on all that unrequited grief and then the sudden relief of seeing Dean alive when he'd resigned himself, if not wholly accepted, the idea that his brother was dead and gone beyond his reach.

'My first instinct was to say yes,' Sam whispered because he didn't trust his voice beyond that. 'I can't do this alone—'

'Sure, you can.'

'Well, I don't want to,' Sam said, and it wasn't lost on Dean the meaning in those words, or the memory of himself speaking them years ago. He wondered suddenly what he would have done if Sam had refused him. Could he have done all this…alone?

'But with Dad there,' Sam continued, a little stronger, 'I got to thinking about all the good you and I have done, all the good the three of us did before that, and I couldn't— I wouldn't be able to turn my back, Dean. I never would have been able to just sit and watch people die, knowing I could have saved them. Or died trying.'

'I get it, Sam.' Dean turned onto his side, slid down a little in the bed so he was nose to nose with his brother. 'I get it.'

Sam ducked his head down, body going tense with the effort he was making to hold back the outlet of all the impending grief. Dean reached for him, pulled him in close and soothed a hand down his back. Sam shuddered under the touch.

'How many more times can we do this, Dean?' Sam choked out. 'My god, how many more…?'

He broke then, sobbing into Dean's shoulder with the same wracking silence he had when he'd thought he would never see his brother again. It was all Dean could do to hold him while he convulsed under the strain of all that pain letting loose. 

'Shhh. Shh, Sammy, hush,' Dean murmured eventually. 'I'm here. I'm right here.'

He wanted to promise he always would be, but he wasn't inclined to make promises to his brother anymore that he wasn't certain he could keep, and he knew there would always be another time, one more time, that one or the other of them or both would have to put their lives on the line for the sake of the world. If they kept hunting, and he didn't see a way for them to stop, it wasn't in their blood to leave people to suffer when they could help them, then there would be another time just like this one.

Sam settled after a while, hiccuping softly against Dean's chest like he had done when he was a little boy coming down from some terrible tantrum or nightmare that had been too real to escape upon waking until Dean had wrapped him solidly in his arms and rocked him, talking to him constantly until Sam could finally hear him.

'Dean…'

Sam reached for Dean's hip, pulled him closer. Dean's breath caught and his fingers tightened in Sam's hair.

'Sam, don't. You need to sleep. You don't need this, not right now.'

'I do need this,' Sam insisted, tipping his head up to mouth at the underside of Dean's jaw. 'I need this to remind me.'

Dean didn't need to ask 'of what?' He knew. His own body wanted the same kind of release, the physical manifestation of what they were; how tangled up in one another's souls they were so that there was no way to see the beginning of one or the end of the other. Dean had always found it interesting that Sam was a talker, the one who wanted to hash out their feelings, to try to evaluate and understand. Except now. In times like this, when it maybe mattered the most, and they were the most screwed up, Sam was silent. Dean figured it was because there just weren't the kind of words, in any language, that could come close enough to saying what needed said. 

Sam lifted up above him and spread Dean's knees wide. Dean let them fall open, bracing his feet far apart on either side of Sam's hips as he settled on his haunches between them, wide open for his brother. Sam cupped his palms over Dean's knees for a second and then let his hands trail down the tops of his thighs to his hips where he rubbed at the protruding bones, a frown flickering across his brow as he was reminded again of the toll the last months had taken on Dean. 

Dean watched him intently, face neutral, as Sam brought his hands around and flattened them against Dean's belly, feeling the muscles ripple beneath his fingers. He pulled his hands lower, grasped the soft, rarely exposed skin of Dean's inner thighs and pushed them further apart, then he bent forward and nuzzled his cheek against his brother's half hard cock, felt it twitch and warm and thicken under his tender gesture. He turned his head and breathed a hot gust of air across the velvety skin, watched hungrily as Dean's cock filled further, lifting off his belly, reddening with the influx of blood.

'I love you, Dean,' Sam whispered.

Dean made a sound in his throat, and Sam looked up from under his lashes, saw the sheen in his brother's eyes in the low light, and he didn't need to hear the words. He pressed his lips to the hard length of Dean's cock, softly, lipping at him dryly until Dean was panting a little, and his fingers were finding their way to knotting in the bed sheets. Sam moved lower, nuzzling into Dean's balls, pulling the musky scent of him deep into his nose, and then he opened his mouth and laved a long, thick, wet stripe from the base of Dean's cock up to his velvet soft, burgeoning head. He wet his lips, opened wide, and took his brother into his mouth, all the way to the back of his throat in one go.

Dean almost yelped at the feel of Sam's throat closing around the head of his cock as he swallowed once, twice, three times, humming with the obvious pleasure of having Dean thick and swollen in his mouth. Sam savored the fullness of his brother's cock against his tongue, working in short little strokes with it against the big vein on the underside that pulsed with blood. He swallowed and tasted the salt of Dean's cum at the back of his mouth. He pulled back, suckled at the the head for an agonizing moment while Dean begged in broken pieces of nonsense interspersed with Sam's name to get on with it and let him come. Sam smiled as he let his lips drag around Dean's swollen head, holding him with just the tip of his tongue for a moment, and then letting his cock bob, thick and angry looking, back against his belly.

Dean growled at the loss of heat and wet around his cock, cursed softly, but fell silent as Sam rose up above him, swinging his long legs out to straddle Dean's thighs and then inching up the bed until he was even with Dean's flanks. Dean automatically reached for Sam's hips, fingers digging in, trying to drag him back down, but Sam stubbornly stayed above him. He reached for Dean's cock with one hand, milking him expertly until his fingers were slick with pre-cum, then he spread his legs a little further apart, reached between them and pushed a finger up inside himself.

Dean's eyes flashed wide at the sight of Sam breaching himself with one long finger, then fell back nearly closed, hooded with wanting. With Sam settled between his legs, he'd been thoroughly prepared and on board with being fucked out of his mind, but it didn't look like that's how Sam wanted it to go this time. He watched avidly as Sam worked himself open, bracing himself a little with a grip on Dean's forearm, eyes going dark and hot as he stroked across his own prostate again and again. His cock was hanging heavy and curved between his legs, dripping onto Dean's belly, and Sam reached to rewet his fingers in the slick pool gathered in Dean's bellybutton before he thrust two fingers deep into himself, all the way to the last knuckle, groaning and falling forward a little. Dean caught him, balanced him, helped hold him up as he worked himself harder, gasping now and mumbling little bits of needy nonsense and Dean's name. 

Dean felt like he could come just watching Sammy finger-fuck himself, and he wanted to, but not this time. This time it wouldn't be enough, not for either of them. He grasped Sam's hips and gave him a hard tug downward. Sam startled a little, like he'd forgotten anything but the feel of his fingers working his ass open. The second he saw the flare of hunger in Dean's eyes, though, he settled downward, spreading himself, letting Dean guide him onto the head of his cock and then push him down and down, slowly.

Sam felt himself stretching around Dean's cock, burning as Dean pushed up into him, slow but not slow enough, forcing the muscles to open to him. Sam gasped at the discomfort but didn't stop, and Dean kept pushing, pushing until Sam felt his his own balls settle against Dean's warm, heaving belly. He rocked his hips a little, too tight to actually move, and Dean groaned, head thrusting back into the pillow as his body arched and he pushed impossibly deeper into Sam's ass. Sam settled onto him, relaxed himself, opened himself, and reveled in the fullness of Dean inside him. He squeezed his muscles, felt Dean twitch inside him, pulse and swell thicker, harder. 

'Jesus…Sammy…'

Sam took hold of Dean's hands at his hips, laced their fingers together and held them tightly as he rose up a fraction and settled back down. Dean arched again, thrusting upward. Sam squeezed and pulled up and Dean nearly yelled when he thrust back down. Sam repeated the move, again and again, drawing up a little farther, thrusting down a little harder, until Dean was begging him to stop, afraid that he couldn't hold on.

'No, Dean. No,' Sam gasped, twining their fingers together tighter. 'I won't stop. Wanna feel you. Inside me. Hot and…wet and… Let it go, Dean. Just. Let it go…'

Dean groaned as he came, hips thrusting upward with enough force to lift them both off the bed. Sam cried out and came in the same moment, splashing thick ropes of cum across Dean's belly and chest. He fell forward, pinning their hands between them, shaking and gasping for breath. Dean wasn't in much better shape, trembling beneath Sam, drawing in short, uneven breaths. Sam loosened his fingers from Dean's grip and slipped to the side, settling with one leg flung across Dean's thigh and a knee wedged down between his brother's.

They lay in silence, sweat and cum cooling and drying on their skin. Dean made a half hearted attempt to wipe them down with one of their t-shirts that were discarded by the bed. Sam smiled and pressed a kiss into the hollow of Dean's shoulder. 

'I love you,' he said again.

'Love you, too, Sam,' Dean answered, turning to press a kiss to the crown of Sam's head.

'Do you think,' Sam asked after another few minutes. 'Do you think we'll ever be able to tell them?'

Dean closed his eyes and sighed. He could feel Sam looking up at him, searching his face.

'It took us so long to get this far, Dean. I don't know if I— I don't think I can stand to go back.'

'We'll find a way, Sammy,' Dean said.

Sam nodded, but it was the kind that was resigned and uncertain. 'I don't want to have to hide again. I-I need you too much.'

'I know,' Dean said, voice thick. He pulled Sam closer into his side. 'I know. Me, too. But we'll figure it out. I promise.'

_I love you._

 Dean could feel the words mouthed against his skin and smiled. Sometimes Sam just couldn't say it enough, but he knew how it annoyed his brother because Dean placed so little faith in words, and tried not to say it too often where he could be heard. Dean slipped a hand into his hair, ruffled it a little, and squeezed him in a hard, quick hug. 

'You, too, kiddo,' he replied, and he felt Sam grin against his shoulder, huge and happy, and that was all the reason Dean would ever need for anything for the rest of his life.


	7. Epilogue

John stood in front of the house, looking up at the dark windows.

There was a bite of winter in the air, but the day was clear, the sky pale and cloudless, stretching for miles overhead. Mary pushed a little closer into his side, sliding a hand into his coat pocket because she'd left her gloves in the truck. 

'You sure you want to do this?' he asked her, and his voice wasn't as steady as he wanted, but it was hard to be here. Not as hard as he'd once imagined it might be. In fact, under the expected pain and old, old grief, he could feel the resonance of triumph. He'd been a broken man when he'd left this house more than thirty years ago, and he was returning to it whole, maybe not healed, but whole, with his wife at his side and his sons alive and well.

'Yes,' Mary said firmly. 'Yes. This is our home. We belong here. I won't let the past keep us from what's ours. It's done that for far too long.'

John nodded his silent agreement, looked up and down the street once. It looked a lot like it had then, and yet different. He doubted there was anyone left here who would recognize him, and if there was, it didn't matter. Sam and Dean had created whole new identities for them, a trick John would have envied twenty years ago, and supplied them with credible pasts and funds to get them settled and start fresh. How they had acquired the ability to do this was all bound up in the past that neither of his sons was talking about right now. They insisted that there was time, but the story couldn't be told in one sitting and there were still parts of it, John could tell by the haunted look in both his sons' eyes, that couldn't be told at all. 

So, here they were, come full circle back to Lawrence, Kansas where it had all begun, where John had been sure it ended as well. He was never so glad in all his life to be proven wrong.

He moved away from Mary for a second to go into the middle of the front yard and pull up the 'SOLD' sign. He returned and tossed it into the truck bed, then fished in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He jingled them a little and smiled.

'Shall we?' he asked.

Mary smiled back at him, took his hand firmly in her own, and nodded. 'Yes.'

Together, they walked up the path, climbed the porch steps, and went home.


End file.
